When asked to explain the origin of the practice of Dor-je Shuk-den, his followers point to a rather obscure and bloody episode of Tibetan history, the premature death of Trul-ku Drak-ba Gyel-tsen (sprul sku grags pa rgyal mtshan, 1618-1655).

Unspecified phenomena that are similar to their causes (rgyu-mthun-pas lung ma-bstan) – the forms of emanations (sprul-pa) that one produces, motivated by an unspecified thought to produce emanations (sprul-pa'i sems).

This network of bodies with form include both sambhogakaya (longs-sku, bodies of full use, corpus of full use, Enjoyment Body) and nirmanakaya (sprul-sku, bodies of emanations, corpus of emanations, Emanation Body).